


The Haunting of Malfoy Manor

by undercoverwarlock



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter in the Muggle World, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, like a couple of sentences really, like there is a lot to discuss with this one it is kind of problematic but just read it okay, slight underage kissing, trust me there is no non-con or anything like that, very brief theo/harry, very brief though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercoverwarlock/pseuds/undercoverwarlock
Summary: Everyone knew about the abandoned manor outside the village. But when Harry and his friends go to investigate it, he finds that it isn't as empty as everyone thought.(Not related in any way to the The Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor).
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Theodore Nott/Harry Potter
Comments: 21
Kudos: 101





	The Haunting of Malfoy Manor

**Author's Note:**

> Characters belong to J.K. Rowling. Legally. 
> 
> Please see the tags (some spoilers) - I had this idea but as I was writing realised it could be construed as slightly problematic, since Draco doesn't age but meets Harry as a child and Harry basically grows up throughout the story. My caveat is that there are boundaries in place, and nothing really serious happens until Harry's an adult. Also, there is a reference to suicide, so please be careful.

The old house stood in the middle of the valley, once elegant hedgerows overgrown into twisting gnarled creatures covered in cobwebs. The grass was tall, bristling with weeds. But it was summer, and the days were long. There was nothing to fear as long as the sun was up.

The gravel crunched under their feet as the three kids made their way past the rusted iron gates up the drive. One was a girl, with thick curls, dark skin and buckteeth, wearing a maroon T-shirt and baggy shorts belted around her waist. The other two were young boys, a red-head covered in freckles whose hand-me-down jeans had massive holes in the knees, and a boy with wild black hair and round, wire-rimmed glasses taped together at the bridge. The black-haired boy had a scar like a bolt of lightning on his forehead that nicked his left eyebrow. The air smelled of sun-baked earth, dusty and heavy with pollen. Ron, the red-head, sneezed.

“There better not be any spiders,” he grumbled, wiping the snot away with the back of his hand. Hermione, the girl, rolled her eyes, her bushy hair bouncing as she looked over her shoulder at him.

“It’s a haunted house, Ron, of course there are going to be spiders,” she said with exasperation. Ron stopped dead in his tracks while Hermione and the other boy, Harry, continued on. His face had gone white as a sheet.

“You’re joking, right?” he yelled at them. Harry chuckled as he and Hermione shared a mischievous look. “Right?!”

“Come on!” Harry called back. Ron swore under his breath and jogged to catch up to the pair.

The front door had been boarded up, as had most of the windows. Everyone knew, though, that one of the boards covering the drawing room window was loose, and all you had to do was push open the sash to get in. One by one, the three of them wiggled their way through, dropping down onto a grimy chaise lounge below. Harry made his way into the middle of the room, craning his neck as he stared at all the fine furnishings, now shrouded in heavy cobwebs and a thick layer of dust. The walls were decorated with rich purple wallpaper, the marble floors covered in ornate rugs that coughed up small clouds beneath their feet.

“Bloody hell,” Ron whispered, his voice echoing slightly. His eyes were as wide as serving dishes. “People really live like this?”

“Lived,” Hermione corrected him. “No one’s lived in this house for decades.”

Harry frowned. He looked over at where his two best friends were peeking under the sheets covering the furniture. There was a strange prickling at the back of his neck, like someone was watching him. He turned.

Something white flashed in the doorway, before disappearing into the darkened hallway.

“Did you guys see that?” he gasped. But Ron and Hermione had uncovered a piano and were playing around on the yellowed keys. Hermione plucked out bits of _Fur Elise_ , the notes slightly out of key. Harry turned back towards the doorway, his green eyes narrowing. Without another word, he walked out into the hallway.

There it was again, at the end of the hall – a flash of white. Harry followed it, past portraits of regal men and women with cold grey eyes, down towards the main entryway. There was the front door, paint peeling and cracked. Across from it, a grand staircase with gilded balustrades, the steps lined with red velvet carpet, faded now and worn bald down the middle. Harry’s eye caught a flurry of movement at the top of the stairs, and this time, the white flash had a form – a young man, tall and pale. He didn’t think. He ran up the steps.

The figure had turned right at the landing, so Harry did the same. Distantly, he thought he should stop, go and get Ron and Hermione. Something stopped him, though. Almost like… he had been here before.

There was another long hallway, with doors leading off it, and Harry hesitated. A grandfather clock stood to his left, the pendulum still swinging even though the clock had stopped ticking long ago. Should he try every door? But no – there it was again – a young man, slipping through the door at the end. But when Harry reached the end of the hall, the door was closed. Ice trickled through his veins. When he reached for the handle, his hand was steady.

The door opened, creaking on its rusted hinges, into a bedroom. There was a four poster bed that took up most of the room, faded green velvet curtains pulled back to let in the light through the window, and a marble fireplace with a wrought iron cover. The room smelled of mildew and dust, tickling Harry’s throat with each breath. And there, sitting in a wing-backed olive-coloured chair near the window, was the young man.

His skin was the colour of porcelain. His white-blonde hair was swept back off his forehead. He wore a cotton button-down, tailored perfectly for his thin frame, and dark trousers. He was all sharp angles and soft shadows, grey eyes watching Harry from back-lit shadows.

“You can see me?” the man asked, his voice a quiet drawl. Harry cleared his throat and nodded.

“Are you a ghost?” Harry asked. The man gave a surprised chuckle.

“I guess I am,” he replied. He cocked his head and looked Harry up and down. Harry couldn’t quite make out his face, but he saw something flash in those storm grey eyes that made his stomach clench. “What’s your name?” the man asked curiously.

“Harry,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“Draco. Draco Malfoy.” He paused. Then he smiled at Harry, small and incredulous, as he whispered, “Gods, you look just like him.”

Harry frowned. “Like who?”

Draco shook his head and stood, unfolding his tall, lanky form. His feet made no sound as he crossed over to Harry, coming to a stop a few feet away from him. Harry’s heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t say why – if this was a ghost, he couldn’t hurt Harry, and besides, Harry knew, with an unexplainable conviction, that this man, Draco, wouldn’t hurt him, even if he was flesh and bone.

“How old are you?” Draco asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

“Eleven,” said Harry. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one. Or I was, I guess.” He frowned at his shoes. “I don’t know now.”

“Why did you ask if I could see you? Earlier?” Harry asked. “If you’re a ghost, surely anyone can see you.”

“Normally, yes,” said Draco with a wry smile. “But I’m a special kind of ghost, I guess. Most of the time, no one can see me. But four times a year – Midsummer, Hallowe’en, the winter solstice and Beltane, as far as I can tell – people can see me. I become sort of… real, again. I mean….” He wandered over to the fireplace. He raised an eyebrow at Harry, making sure he was watching as he put a hand on the mantle. Then, he pressed down, and his whole hand went straight through. Harry gasped.

“You really are a ghost,” Harry breathed. “Or, whatever you are.”

Draco barked out a laugh. “Yeah. Whatever I am.” He pulled his hand back through the mantle. “It’s funny, sometimes I’m more solid, and others, not so much. Hallowe’en is when I tend to be more… here, I guess. Don’t know why, I never paid much attention in – ” He trailed off. He lowered his hand to his side as he gave Harry a quizzical look. “You don’t know anything about magic, do you?”

Harry shook his head. “Like, in books and fairy stories?”

Draco sighed and nodded. “Forget it, it’s not important,” he said, waving his hand. “I just thought, maybe…”

Down the hall, Harry thought he could hear Ron and Hermione calling his name. He turned his head to look. There they were again, and this time he could make out his name clearly as his friends called for him.

“I have to go,” he said. He looked back over at Draco, who seemed to be trying to keep his face a neutral mask even as something lingered in his eyes. Harry wished he could stay, wanting in a strangely desperate way to know more about what happened to this man who felt so familiar to him. “Can I come visit you again?” he asked. Draco blinked in surprise.

“Of course,” he said, a pleased grin spreading across his face. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Harry?” They were getting closer now.

“Okay,” Harry said, grinning back at Draco. “I’ll come back soon. Hallowe’en, you said?” Draco nodded as Harry backed away towards the door, not wanting to look away just yet. “I’ll be here. I promise.”

“See you soon, Harry.”

Harry ran into his friends in the hallway. When they demanded to know where he had gone, he just shrugged and said he wanted to check out the first floor. Hermione rolled her eyes at him as if he had done something incredibly stupid.

“You shouldn’t have wandered off,” she said. “What if you had fallen through a hole or something?”

“Or worse,” said Ron, “gotten attacked by a ghoul or a vampire or something.”

Harry laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said as they made their way down the grand staircase. “There’s no such thing as vampires or ghosts.” He looked over his shoulder and winked. The pale figure of a man waved at him from the landing with a smile.

-

Harry visited the old manor house four times a year, every year, almost without fail. In the summer and winter, it was easier to sneak out of his aunt and uncle’s house without being noticed, happy as they were to ignore him as much as possible. For Beltane, he would drop by after school, but he couldn’t stay as long as the other times. Hallowe’en was tricky, because he could rarely shake off Hermione and Ron who usually wanted to spend that evening trick or treating or else binging horror films as they shoved candy into their mouths. Somehow, though, he always managed it. For years, he visited Draco, getting to know the young man in the old house.

Sometimes, Draco would show him around the house, tell him stories about the people in the portraits. There were secret passageways that connected to rooms and staircases – most likely service passages for maids and servants back in the day, but Harry liked to think of them as secret passageways. Other times, he and Draco would lounge in Draco’s bedroom, talking about their childhoods, old stories, new stories, whatever came to mind. Harry knew he could trust Draco with anything, because who else was the man going to tell? He was a ghost trapped in a manor that not even the homeless or drug addicts would touch.

Then, there were the times that Harry would show up with a black eye and broken nose, or covered in bruises and scrapes. The first time was on the spring equinox when Harry was twelve – he hadn’t been able to outrun his cousin and his gang that day after school. He showed up to the manor, blood drying on the scratch on his cheek, limping on a sprained ankle. Draco had heard him come in, it seemed, and met him as he was making his way through the drawing room. In a flash, he went from standing in the doorway to right in front of Harry. He knelt down, hands fluttering as he tried but couldn’t touch.

“Circe’s tits, what happened?” Draco asked. There was a crease between his thin eyebrows that made Harry’s stomach do a weird flip he couldn’t explain.

“You and your strange swears,” Harry said with a smile as he tried to step away from Draco. He winced when his weight rolled onto his sore ankle. Draco pressed his lips into a thin line, his eyes narrowing. Then he stood and tried to direct Harry towards the sheet-covered sofa. His hand kept coming up as if to grab Harry’s shoulder, but it would fall straight through like a chill mist, making Harry shiver. When Harry did finally sit down on the couch, Draco sat down next to him, a serious expression on his pale face.

“Tell me,” he said. “What happened?”

Harry sighed. He looked down at his knees where his jeans had torn open when he fell. “It’s nothing,” he said, “Just my cousin and his friends.”

“Your cousin and his friends,” Draco echoed, unconvinced. “They, what, tried to teach you how to dance or something?”

Harry laughed derisively. “Nah, they’re more fans of boxing than dancing.” His lips curled in a parody of a smile. “It’s fine, really, they’ve done worse.”

Draco frowned. “You live with this boy?” he asked. When Harry nodded, he let out a series of incredibly imaginative curses under his breath, most of which Harry didn’t understand because they seemed to be in French. “And your aunt and uncle don’t say or do anything?”

Harry shook his head and shrugged. “They don’t really care,” he said, his voice small and quiet. Ron and Hermione knew all about Harry’s living situation, and since they befriended each other, the attacks had lessened somewhat. But the truth was, they couldn’t be with him all the time. Draco leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, as he tried to get Harry to look at him.

“Is there anyone else you can go to?” Draco asked. “Teachers, anything?” He knew that Harry’s parents had died in a car accident, that he lived with his aunt and uncle precisely because he had no other family. Harry had told him as much, ages ago, and didn’t question why Draco hadn’t pushed it further.

“The teachers know, for the most part, but there’s nothing they can do – not when it’s Dudley and not my aunt and uncle, you know? Just kids being kids.” He flinched when Draco’s hand came up in his periphery, but by the time he had relaxed, Draco’s hand had frozen, fingertips inches from the abrasion on his cheek. He wanted Draco to touch it, if only for the cold to ease the burning pain. Not for any other reason or anything. Draco’s hand fell away.

“I’m sorry,” Draco whispered. “I wish there was something I could do.”

Harry gave him a small smile. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just knowing you’re here is something.”

Draco stopped asking about the injuries after a while. Instead, he would sit with Harry, and tell him stories about a boy he knew, another boy named Harry. He would tell him how this other Harry had gotten into the worst trouble, only to get out of it just as easily.

“I called him St. Po- St. Harry, because he could do no wrong,” said Draco once, as Harry leaned his head back while he sat on the drawing room couch, staunching the flow of a bloody nose with the T-shirt he had peeled off. It was midsummer, the air heavy and humid with the threat of an oncoming thunderstorm. Harry would be fourteen in a month or so, and he was still growing into himself, long limbs and bony ribs beneath the pale gold of his skin. “In our first year, he got onto one of the school, er, sports teams – we had houses, right, and each house had a team so we could all compete for the House Cup – in any case, he got onto the team even when first years weren’t allowed. He would go on to win just about every match we had, no matter what.”

“Wha’ kin’ ob spor’s?” Harry tried to ask. Draco chuckled at his attempt.

“Er… football.”

Harry raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. He pulled the shirt away from his nose. The bleeding had stopped.

“Who punched you, anyway?” Draco asked. One of his hands fluttered up, as if to try and touch, to check the broken nose. There was a slight crease between his brows, a frown tugging at his mouth. Harry shrugged.

“Jus’ some kid,” Harry mumbled, his words nasally and voice congested. “Called me gay, so I hit him.”

There was the frown. “Why?”

“Because that’s what you have to do. They call you gay, you hit them.” He let out a huff of laughter. “Even if it’s true.”

Draco’s eyebrows shot up into his fringe. Harry dabbed at his nose with his bundled up shirt, checked it for blood. “Oh,” Draco breathed. “Is it?”

Harry shrugged again. He hung his head as he stared at the bloodied shirt in his hands. “Not sure, really,” he muttered. “Still figuring it out, you know? But even if – no one can know.” He let out a long breath before pulling his shirt back on, the fabric sticking to his sweaty skin.

“Yeah,” Draco said quietly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Harry looked up then, his eyes wide. “Really?”

Draco chuckled. “You act like you’ve never met another gay person.”

Harry opened his mouth, closed it again. He took a deep breath and leaned back, looking Draco over slowly. “How did you know?” he asked. “That you were gay?”

Draco scoffed. “People always ask me that,” he said, reflecting Harry’s posture and draping one arm over the back of the sofa. “How did you know you were gay, when did you know, were you abused as a child, why would you choose to live like this?” He shook his head, his smile twisted, pained. Harry watched him in silence.

“The truth is,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “you don’t choose it. You just know that you’re not like everyone else. For me, it never really mattered until – well. Until I met Harry. Not you, obviously, my – er – it sounds weird to say it, but my Harry.” Draco huffed out a laugh. “He was never mine, though. Unlike you, he never was – at least, I don’t think, although maybe, he never said, never… Anyway. Erm. The first time I met him, we were, er, getting fitted for our school uniforms, and he was just this… scruffy looking kid, but for some reason, I really wanted to impress him. I wanted to be his friend, but he didn’t, and we very quickly became enemies. As we got older, though, I realised that there was something else. All the boys were talking about girls, all the girls were talking about boys, and I… all I could think about was Harry. But of course, that was never an option.”

Harry nodded. He pursed his lips as he considered Draco’s words. “Did you ever like someone else?”

Draco shook his head and looked away, rubbing at his jaw with one hand. “Not really, no,” he said. “I tried, but… no, it was always Harry.”

“But he never liked you back.”

“No,” Draco murmured. “He got married, just after the war, to his best friend’s sister.”

“Which war?”

Draco looked perplexed at this and, frowning, said, “ _The_ war.”

Harry cocked his head to one side. Bruises were beginning to form beneath his eyes, smudging his brown skin black. Perhaps, he decided, it was best not to push it – ghosts could get testy if you asked when they were from, if any of the movies and stories were anything to go off of. Draco mistook his meditative silence for something else, and his frown darkened.

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you, for chasing after the same man, knowing he would never like me back?” he asked, cool and quiet. Harry frowned in return.

“No,” he said. “No, it, er… I get it.” He bit his lower lip, his upper lip scabbing where it had been split from the punch. His stomach twisted in his gut, tightening around his thrumming pulse deep in his abdomen. He breathed in deep through his nose. Draco watched him all the while, never taking his eyes off him. But Harry said nothing.

A couple years later, when Harry was sixteen, his friends decided to have a Hallowe’en party at the old manor – “It’s a real-life haunted house, Harry! It’s perfect!” Ron had pointed out when Harry had been reluctant. He made himself smile and went along with it. In the end, he, Hermione, Ron, Ron’s sister Ginny who kept looking at Harry when she thought he wouldn’t notice, and their friends Neville, Luna and Lavender all piled into the drawing room of the dilapidated house.

Harry thought they might notice how the sheet over the couch had been stuck into the cushions after all the time Harry spent lounging on it with Draco, or the way there was a path to the hall where the dust lay less heavily on the ground. Everyone was too busy, though, admiring the peeling wallpaper, the moth-eaten velvet curtains, the threadbare Oriental rugs, the large stash of cider, vodka and juice they had brought. Harry caught a flicker of white in the corner of his eye and turned – but the hall was dark, and Draco was nowhere to be found.

It didn’t take long for everyone to get ridiculously drunk off of very little alcohol. The electric lantern they had brought cast strange shadows on the walls that swung and danced against the dark walls. They ran through the usual party games – Truth or Dare (Harry always opted for dare), Spin the Bottle (by some miracle, it never landed on Harry), and Charades (for which everyone was simply too drunk and fell into fits of giggles over everything). When Hermione and Ron started snogging on the couch – _Harry’s_ couch – Neville and Lavender quickly followed suit, leaving Harry, Luna and Ginny sitting loose-limbed on the floor, trying to ignore the couples around them. Ginny snuck glances at Harry through her lashes. Luna, meanwhile, chattered on about crystals and auras and how she could absolutely tell someone’s future based on the alignment of the stars on the day they were born, or the lines on their palm. Then, she reached over suddenly and took Harry’s hand in hers, flipping it over to look at his palm.

“See here,” she said in her usual dreamy voice, “You have a faint head line that begins below the life line. That means intellect or reasoning not being fully used, a traumatic childhood, shyness or defensiveness due to hidden insecurity.”

“I mean, I know that, but hey!”

Luna giggled but continued on, dusting her finger along his palm. “You have a lot of faint bow-shaped lines, so you’re optimistic but not that optimistic, happy but not as happy as you could be. Then there’s your fate line – it’s deep, prominent, and forked. Your life will be controlled by fate, and you will have some public recognition pre-ordained from your childhood or past worlds. Huh. Your intuition line is deep and well-developed where it cuts through the mound of the moon. Do you ever feel like you can predict things, or see things others can’t, or do things you can’t quite explain?”

Harry, who had by this point finished off three ciders and was having a hard time focusing on Luna’s words, simply shrugged. Luna blinked her owlish blue eyes at him for a moment before turning back to his palm.

“So, essentially, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Harry Potter,” she said, smiling up at him. Then she poked at the line near the top of his palm. “Your heart line tells me you love or will love someone, deeply, and that they will be with you for the rest of your life. They’ll be your soulmate, your partner for as long as you live.”

She released his palm and patted him on the cheek. Her usually distant eyes seemed to look straight into him, then, as if all of Harry’s secrets were laid bare before her. Harry’s chest tightened, and he felt his cheeks flush involuntarily as he tried to stutter out something, anything in his defence. Luna opened her mouth, as if to say something else, but instead she turned towards Ginny. “Your turn, Gin! Let’s see those hands!”

As Luna rolled over to Ginny, who was now forced to focus all of her attention on the other girl instead of him, Harry stumbled to his feet, swaying slightly. “Have to piss,” he mumbled, and tried to walk in as straight a line as possible out to the hallway, lighting his way with a small torch. After a quick detour to the toilet, he leaned against the door to the water closet, trying to get the world to stop spinning. He took one deep breath, then another. He had to sober up, or throw up.

Harry made his way with one hand on the wall for guidance to the kitchen, where he had stashed some water bottles a while ago. He drank one, then opened another, sipping at it more cautiously. Luna’s words rolled through his head, connecting then falling apart only to connect again. How could she know all that, just from looking at his hand? _Happy but not as happy as you could be… your soulmate, your partner for as long as you live…_

His grip on the water bottle was loose as he made his way through the house he knew so well. He followed a service corridor up to the first floor that opened just outside of Draco’s room. He didn’t knock – he never knocked – as he slipped into the room, calling, “Draco? You here?”

Draco stood by the window, looking out across the grounds. He turned just enough towards Harry that Harry could see a faint, sombre smile on his pale lips.

“Having fun?” Draco asked. There was a bitterness to his words that made Harry pull back, confused. The world had begun to tilt to one side again. Harry made his way over to the bed and flopped down onto the slightly mildewy sheets.

“Most of my friends are snogging each other,” he said, his words slurring together even as he tried to articulate. “And Luna just read my future… or my life… she read my palm.”

He heard Draco give a dry laugh. Then, a cold breath of air fluttered against Harry’s side. He turned, and there was Draco, lying next to him with his arms behind his head. His skin was like starlight… Lord, what was Harry thinking? But still, he couldn’t look away. _You love someone, deeply, and they will be with you for the rest of your life…_

“So, what did she say? Your friend.”

Harry shrugged. “Nothing important,” he mumbled. Draco turned his head to look at him, one thin eyebrow raised.

“You sure about that?” he asked with a crooked smile. “You sound like you’ve seen your own ghost, not just me.”

Harry swallowed hard past his racing heart, which had become lodged in his throat. Draco must have seen something in his eyes. He sat up, the concerned little crease between his eyebrows forming as he looked down at Harry.

“Harry?”

Fuck it.

Harry surged forward and pressed his lips to Draco’s. He’d never kissed anyone before. And Draco – his lips were cold, but sweet, and real beneath Harry’s as he kissed him back tentatively. Without thinking, Harry raised a hand to caress along the sharp edge of Draco’s jaw, to tangle in his white blond hair. But before he could, Draco pulled away, scrambling towards the end of the bed, as far from Harry as he could. Harry frowned as he leaned his weight on his elbow.

“No,” Draco said, his voice shaken but firm in its conviction. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not? You kissed me back!” Harry argued. Draco winced.

“That was a mistake,” he said. “Gods, Harry, you’re only sixteen!”

Harry sat up and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s legal,” he said stubbornly. “I’m basically an adult.” Draco rolled his eyes.

“Not in my world, you’re not,” he shot back. Harry was too tipsy to ask him what he meant. “And I’m a bloody ghost, Harry! If you’re going to kiss anyone, kiss that girl giving you doe-eyes downstairs! Or any boy in your school who won’t punch you for being gay! Anyone but – ”

“Anyone but you?” Harry finished for him. Draco’s eyes filled with tears, but he nodded, his jaw set as he pulled his knees into his chest, like he was willing himself to disappear. Harry sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, momentarily dislodging his glasses. He readjusted his glasses, let his hands drop into his lap, Luna’s words echoing in his ears. “You felt pretty real just then,” he said under his breath.

“Hallowe’en.” Draco’s voice was small, vulnerable, as he watched Harry with tears he refused to shed. “I’m always a bit more solid on Hallowe’en.”

Harry looked up at him through his thick lashes. He saw Draco’s Adam’s apple bob, one of his thin hands coming up to rub at his eyes. Harry fidgeted with his hands, pushing his thumb against all the lines of his life written in his palm. “What if I love – ”

“No.” Draco shook his head. “Don’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” Draco laughed, but it was hollow, empty and cold. “Because it’s not true, Harry. It’s not real.”

“How would you know?” Harry snapped. Draco blanched. “Maybe that’s why he never liked you back, have you ever thought about that? Maybe it was because you kept pushing him away until he realised he was better off without you? Maybe he did love you, but you were just too self-absorbed to see it, and he gave up! You ever think about that?”

Draco’s mouth open and closed like a gasping fish, his eyes wide as he stared into Harry’s, into the hurt and rage in their green depths. Harry pushed off the bed, getting to his feet as he mumbled, “I’ve got to get back to my friends.” Draco reached for him, but Harry pulled away, and his fingertips passed through Harry’s wrist, sending a chill up his bones. “Don’t,” he told Draco. “Just… don’t.”

He left without another word. He stormed downstairs, back into the drawing room, where the couples had disappeared to somewhere more private and Ginny and Luna were laying on their backs, giggling as they passed a cigarette between them. Harry walked right past them.

“Harry!” Ginny sat up, her cheeks almost as red as her hair. “Where - ?”

“I’m going home,” he said without looking at her. He hesitated, one hand on the window frame, and turned back to her. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I can’t give you what you want.”

“Harry? Harry!”

But he was already dropping down to the garden below. He walked away in the darkness, lit only by the waxing moon, his hands in his jacket pockets as he watched the gravel crunch beneath his shoes. With each step, he felt his chest collapse further in on itself, like paper in his fist. He pushed through, forcing himself to breathe. It was all in his head, he told himself. It wasn’t real.

From an upstairs window, a pale figure watched him go, before flickering out of existence as the clock struck midnight.

-

Harry didn’t come back to the manor at Midwinter. He almost didn’t come when Beltane rolled around. But when the day came, and he was on his way back to the Dursley’s after school, he found himself turning away from the well-ordered streets and towards the valley where the crumbling building stood, stark stone against the green vale. There was a chill in the air, but the days were lengthening, and daffodils were golden in the green earth. Harry shivered as he followed the old overgrown lane. He argued with himself even as he squeezed through the drawing room window, trying to convince himself to go, to go back to the Dursley’s, where he would inevitably hide in his room without supper to avoid the snide remarks and cracking knuckles of his cousin.

But then Draco was there, beaming at him. “You came!” he said, rushing towards him. Harry couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face.

“Yeah,” he said lamely. They stared at each other for a moment too long, the memory of Hallowe’en unspoken between them even as they devoured the other with their eyes. Harry turned away first, set his rucksack down on the sofa. “I stayed at Ron’s over the winter hols, and their farm is on the other side of the village,” Harry found himself explaining as he played with the zipper on his rucksack. “And I thought, you probably didn’t want to see me anyways…”

The icy touch of Draco’s hand brushing his shoulder made Harry turn. Draco smiled at him, a warm light in his silver eyes. Harry tried to stifle the hopeful leap his heart gave when his eyes met Draco’s, to resist the desperate need for touch.

“I always want to see you,” said Draco. “Besides, you’re my only contact with the outside world. It gets quite depressing when all you have to talk to are the portraits of your great-grandparents.”

Harry laughed, and Draco’s smile widened, pleased. After that, it was the same as it always was, their kiss forgotten. When the sky had grown dark and teatime was fast approaching, Harry promised to come back for Midsummer. “I’ll never miss another one,” he assured Draco as he hitched his rucksack over his shoulder. Draco watched him from the sofa, his arm on the back and his head in his hand. His expression grew sombre, and he replied,

“You can’t promise that.”

Harry pursed his lips. “Maybe not,” he said, “but I can try.”

And for his part, he kept his word. Then, on the Beltane before his nineteenth birthday, Harry tumbled into the drawing room, flushed and out of breath. He called for Draco as he straightened up, looking around the familiar old room. Draco’s pale figure appeared in the doorway with a curious look. Harry grinned at him.

“I got my exam results!” he exclaimed. “And I got in!”

Draco strode over to him with a beaming smile. “That’s great!” he said, his outstretched hand wavering over Harry’s upper arm. But if Hallowe’en was when Draco was the most solid, Beltane was when he was the most incorporeal. His hand fell back to his side, the smile no longer reaching his eyes. “Which one did you get into, Edinburgh or London?”

“London.” Harry frowned when Draco nodded and turned away, moving to go and sit on the sofa. “I thought you’d be happy for me.” The words sounded childish even as he said them, and Harry immediately wished he hadn’t said anything, but Draco waved him off.

“I am, I am,” said Draco. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, with a sigh. “It’ll be good for you to get out of your aunt and uncle’s house, and I won’t have to worry so much about you showing up with bruises. No, this is good, really good. I’m happy for you.”

Harry sat down next to him, a puff of dust rising from the cushions. “You don’t sound happy,” he pointed out, his voice coaxing as he turned towards Draco. “What is it? I’ll still try to visit, it’ll just have to be during the winter and summer hols, though, when I come to visit Ron and Hermione.”

Draco shook his bowed head. “No, no, I understand that,” he said. “I accepted that the minute you started talking about applying to university. No, it’s just…” He looked up at Harry then, a strained set to his jaw. “I think it’s time I told you the whole story.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “What story?” he asked.

“The story of where I come from.” He took a deep breath, and added, “And the story of how I died.”

He told Harry everything that day. It took several hours – the sun had set and the evening chill set in by the time Draco finished. All the while, Harry couldn’t shake the feeling that he had heard the story before, the feeling that his world had tilted slightly off its axis and slid into another universe all its own, that Draco’s words were coming to him from the bottom of a deep pool.

“I’m not a ghost in the traditional sense. I don’t come from this world at all. I come from a parallel world, one where my family still lives in this manor, where there is magic and prophecies and all the rest. In that world, my world, some people are born with magic, and some are not. My family is what we call a Pureblood family, because every one of us was born a witch or wizard. But more and more often, a witch or wizard is born into a non-magical or Muggle family, or they’re half-blood, or so on. When you’re eleven, if you have magic, you’re sent off to school – here, most of us go to Hogwarts – where we learn magic and potions and all the rest. That’s where I met Harry, after our brief introduction getting our uniforms. That’s where everything started to go wrong.

“You see, many years before, when our parents were young, a wizard came into power who his followers called the Dark Lord. He believed that the magical world should be purified, until only those from Pureblood families remained. Many fought against him, and many died. Everyone thought he was invincible, and in truth he had wrought dark magic so that he was almost immortal. But then, there was a prophecy. It spoke of another that would grow up to challenge the Dark Lord, and proclaimed that neither could live while the other survived. The Dark Lord found the child who was meant to become his enemy. He killed the boy’s parents – two prominent members of the group fighting against him – but when he tried to kill the boy, the spell rebounded. The Dark Lord was destroyed by an infant. That boy was Harry Potter.

“You really do look just like him. You even have the same scar, except his is from surviving the killing curse while yours is from the car crash. He was also sent to live with his aunt and uncle, but they lived just outside of London, and when he was eleven Harry came to Hogwarts. But of course, you’ve heard my stories about St Harry – or, rather, St. Potter. I never called him by his first name, and he never called me by mine.

“Anyway, in his first year, Harry stopped and accidentally killed a professor who had become possessed by the Dark Lord in an attempt to reclaim his body. In his second year, he stopped a phantom version of the Dark Lord from setting a Basilisk – a really big, evil snake – on all the Muggle-born students. Third year was a mess – there was an escaped convict who turned out to be Harry’s godfather, there were Dementors, a werewolf. Then in fourth year, the year of the Triwizard Tournament, the Dark Lord returned, and a student was killed. The Dark Lord began amassing his army again – Harry and his friends tried to stop him, but in reality they only bought themselves some time, and in the process, Harry’s godfather was killed and my father was imprisoned for supporting the Dark Lord. Because, you see, I’m not the hero in this story – I’m the villain.

“My family had always supported the Dark Lord. My father was a Death Eater – that’s what his supporters were called – and when I turned sixteen, I became a Death Eater as well.” Here, he paused, and rolled up his left sleeve, revealing the grey and writhing form of a serpent slithering out of the open mouth of a skull. “I was given the Dark Mark and a mission – to kill the headmaster of our school, Albus Dumbledore, the one man the Dark Lord feared besides Harry. I thought it was an honour, at first. I discovered, however, that it was a curse. Punishment for my father’s imprisonment the year before. I couldn’t kill a man, let alone Dumbledore. But if I didn’t, the Dark Lord would kill me.

“In the end, Dumbledore did die that year, but not by me. The school fell to the Death Eaters. The Dark Lord lived in our manor, when he wasn’t out seeking more powerful weapons. I could never escape the fact that I had chosen the wrong side, and could do nothing but follow along lest I be killed as well, or worse. Then, there was the final battle. Harry died but came back to life – don’t ask, I don’t know myself – and when he did, he finally killed the Dark Lord. He won the war. At seventeen, he was the saviour of the wizarding world.

“After the war, I was acquitted of any war crimes thanks to Harry’s testimony, much to my surprise, but my father was not. Even though I was acquitted, no one wanted anything to do with our family. We were tainted. No one would hire an ex-Death Eater. I tried – I got my qualifications, I applied everywhere, and everywhere turned me down. It was just me and my mother in this old house, haunted by our mistakes and the atrocities the Dark Lord committed here. There was no escaping from everything I and my family had done. I was trapped.

“Then, there was the announcement in the _Daily Prophet_ – our main newspaper – that Harry Potter had married Ginny Weasley, the sister of his best friend.” Harry’s jaw dropped. Draco shrugged and continued, “I know, but in my world, they had been dating since before the war began. It was the logical next step, I guess. It’s stupid to think now, but in that moment when I read the announcement in the paper, I truly felt that I had lost… everything.”

Draco took a long, deep breath, his hands twisting as they hung between his knees. “So,” he said, his voice so quiet that Harry had to strain to hear it, “on the seventh of August, a Tuesday, I went up to my room and… I ended it.” He bowed his head. His shoulders shook as he tried to breathe deeply, evenly. Harry wanted to reach out, to put his hand on Draco’s shoulder, but it was useless. So he sat, and he waited, and he listened.

Draco rubbed at his eyes and sat up, slumping only a little against the back of the couch. “Something must have gone wrong,” he said thickly, “because the next thing I knew I was standing in the bedroom upstairs, wandless, and, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. That first year, I learned two things: one, that people could only see me four times a year, if they saw me at all – I’m afraid I scared quite a few homeless people that year – and two, that I had somehow been sent twenty-one years into the past.

“When I… died, it was 2001. When I arrived here, it was 1980. It would seem the universe has decided that I should relive these years in this alternate world, some kind of cosmic joke or punishment, I can’t tell which. I didn’t understand why until you showed up. I think I was meant to get to know you, to understand the other side of the story, as it is.” He closed his eyes for a moment, his face drawn and exhausted. “So there you have it,” he said. “That’s my story. Now, if you want to go off and live the rest of your life, free of my cursed existence, you can do so. But at least you know the truth.”

Harry was quiet for a long time. “I don’t understand,” he finally whispered. Draco groaned.

“Please don’t make me tell the whole story over again.”

“How… how can I know you’re telling the truth?”

Draco’s eyes filled with tears. “How can I possibly prove that?” he asked, his voice choked. Harry shook his head and got to his feet, pacing up and down the drawing room. None of it made any sense and yet – it all felt like he had heard it before, as if it was a lullaby he could only remember the melody of. A dull ache began to build in his forehead, right where his scar split across the brown skin like white lightning. He rubbed at it, trying to push away the pain, but it only got worse.

“I can’t – I can’t believe it, it doesn’t make any sense, how can I possibly believe anything you’ve said?” Harry demanded, gesticulating with the hand not trying to soothe the pounding ache in his forehead. Draco’s eyes narrowed, watching Harry’s hand on his scar. “How can any of that be real? There’s no such thing as magic…”

Draco let out a huff. “You’re talking to a ghost, just apply the same logic.” He sat up a bit. “What if I told you things about my – about Potter, that you haven’t told me about yourself?”

“What’s the point in that?” Harry snapped. It was like someone was bashing an iron stake into his skull and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m not that Harry!”

“Yes, but there are enough similarities between you, maybe – ”

Harry took off his glasses, pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead with a strangled moan. “God, fine, just, fuck!” He fell to his knees, kneeling on the threadbare rug as he tried to keep his head from splitting apart.

Distantly, he heard Draco calling his name. But with a flash of brilliant agony, he screamed, and his mind broke apart.

He could see it all. A letter written in green spidery ink, a giant of a man leading him down a bustling street, a dusty shop as a wizened old man handed him a wand made of holly, a castle ancient and familiar. A turban unravelling, a gilt mirror in a shadowy room, a blank diary with the name T.M. Riddle embossed in gold, a bloody fang. A gaunt man with matted hair, a flaming goblet, dragons and mermaids with rusted tridents, a boy dead at his feet. A toad-faced woman in horrifying shades of pink, rows upon rows of milky crystal balls, a behemoth of a snake, an old man with kind eyes and silver hair tumbling off a tall tower. A ring, a locket, a cup, a diadem, a sword at the bottom of a lake. Draco, kneeling before him, fear in his grey eyes as he said, “No, I can’t, I can’t be sure.” And always, always, a green light, blood red eyes, and a high, cold laugh.

When Harry opened his eyes, his heart was racing against his ribcage and his breath came in short, wheezing gasps. He tumbled forward onto his hands and knees, glasses forgotten on the ground. The pain in his head was gone. Yet still, his mind raced, trying somehow to piece it all together. He gulped in air like he had run a marathon, one hand scrabbling at his chest, as if he could open his ribcage and release his speeding heart.

There was a whisper of cold air against his sweaty forehead. Draco knelt before him. Harry could see his mouth moving, and between one breath and the next, a switch was flipped, and sound came pounding on his eardrums.

“- you okay? Harry? Can you hear me? Just breathe, you’re going to be okay, I’m – I’m here, okay?”

But when Harry looked at him, he didn’t just see _his_ Draco. He saw the other Harry’s Draco. He saw all that he had been and all that he was. A sneering child with so much anger in the curl of his lip, a proud teenager with a straight back and hate-filled eyes, a broken young man with hollow cheeks and a Mark burned into the vulnerable skin of his forearm. A ghost, telling stories from his youth, trapped forever in a house with a history he could not escape.

Harry scrambled to his feet, shoving his glasses back on. He backed away from Draco towards the open window. Draco stood and tried to reach for Harry, the concerned crease between his eyebrows deepening.

“Harry?” His voice was so soft, so gentle, but it broke Harry’s heart like a hammer. Harry shook his head, almost fell over as the back of his knees ran into the chaise lounge. He reached behind him, not taking his eyes off of Draco as he felt for the windowsill.

“I – I can’t, I’m sor – I have to go.”

“Harry, wait!”

But Harry turned and vaulted through the open window. The minute his feet touched the ground, he took off running, Draco’s voice calling his name echoing in his ears. He didn’t look back.

-

Summer passed into autumn, and autumn into winter. Harry threw himself into his new life, into school and clubbing on the weekends, into football practice and memorising the London Tube. He tried to put all thoughts of the man in the manor out of his mind. When Ron called him on the landline in his dormitory, Harry sounded cheerful, excited by his criminology degree, by everything London had to offer. But when Ron asked if he was coming home for Christmas, Harry grew quiet. Then, he forced out, “Yeah, yeah, they’re kicking us out of the dorms over the winter hols, so yeah, yeah I’ll be back. Yeah, if that’s okay, tell your mum I should be done with classes around the twelfth or so. Yeah. Looking forward to it.”

For the first time in his life, he dreaded going to the Weasley farmstead for Christmas. He knew, logically, that just because he would be back in the village didn’t mean he had to go to the manor, that it was so far away from the farm, that he didn’t need to go. Once he was there, Ron picked him up from the rail station, and almost immediately was swept up into the Christmas preparations. Between helping out around the farm, picking out and decorating the tree, making mince pies with Mrs. Weasley and all the rest, it was Christmas before he knew it, then the New Year, and suddenly he had to get back to London and his classes and his life. But even as he stepped back onto the train, there was that pull in his gut, like a string tied taut around his bones, demanding. _Go_ , it whispered, _go to him._

The train doors closed. Harry sat down by the window, and watched the countryside pass him by. In the distance, he could just make out the dark ruins out in the valley, but within seconds, it was gone.

-

He met someone. A man named Theo in his Forensic Science class. And for a few weeks, it was fun, it was great, he could pretend he was falling for him. Every night, though, he closed his eyes and saw a pale figure in a crisp white button-down and charcoal-coloured trousers, an angular face with soft grey eyes. After two months, Harry stopped returning Theo’s calls. He stopped going to clubs. His roommate, an eager boy named Colin that Harry couldn’t shake the feeling he had met before, only saw him leave their dorm to go to class, the gym, and the café down the road. The few friends he had made chalked it up to first year exam nerves. But when Ron met him at the rail station that summer, he could see the shadows under his friend’s eyes and he knew that something was wrong.

They drove down the old dirt road towards the farm in the tiny car Ron had inherited from his brother Charlie who lived in Romania working on wildlife conservation. Ron had the windows rolled down, and the smell of warm grass and green earth blew through the car with the dry wind. Harry rested his arm on the open window, his hand hanging out and catching the air as they drove. For a while, it was quiet except for the sound of the radio.

“Hermione’s going to France this summer with her parents,” said Ron. Harry hummed. “And Fred and George are still setting up their shop in Bristol, Charlie’s in Romania, and Bill’s travelling for work, so it’ll just be you, me, Ginny and Percy this summer. It’ll be pretty quiet, compared to London.”

“That’s fine,” Harry said, watching the fields pass and the ancient trees bow their branches over the road. “Quiet’s good.”

Ron nodded to himself. He tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. They turned onto the drive leading up to the farm in silence. Then, Harry turned to Ron and asked, “Midsummer’s this weekend, right?”

Ron screwed his face up in thought. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“No reason,” Harry said, looking back out the window. “Just wondering.”

Ron frowned at him as they pulled up to the main house. It had once been a Georgian-era cottage, but over the generations had been added on until it became a mosaic of various and disparate architectural styles. Harry loved it. Unlike the pre-fabricated house his aunt and uncle lived in closer to the village centre, this house had been loved for a couple hundred years, and it showed. Ron parked the car, shaking his head.

“London’s changed you, mate,” he said. Harry raised his eyebrows at him. “You’re so… I don’t know. Quiet.”

Harry got out of the car, swinging his duffel bag over his shoulder as he followed Ron up to the house. “I’ve always been quiet,” he argued, trying to make his tone good-natured and nonchalant. Ron shook his head again – his flame-red hair needed a cut and stuck out at all angles like he’d never met a comb in his life, not unlike Harry’s own mop of wild curls.

“Not like this, mate,” said Ron simply. He held the door open for his friend, concerned confusion in the twist of his mouth as he looked at Harry hesitating on the driveway. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s like you’re missing something. I think you’ve been gone too long.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s only been, what, six months?” he said with a forced smile. “And I can’t stay here forever, you know that.”

Ron shrugged and gestured for Harry to go inside. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, I know.”

They didn’t say anything more about it. Ron’s father was getting older and needed all the help he could get on the farm, so Harry and Ron spent most of their days hauling in the harvest or sorting out the animals, milking the goats or feeding the chickens and so on. It was such a welcome relief from studying that for the first few days, Harry found himself pleasantly exhausted, mind clear and muscles sore from the work.

Before he knew it, the weekend had rolled around, and midsummer was staring Harry in the face. He woke up that morning in the room up in the loft that he and Ron shared on the old trundle bed that was much too small for him, the sun shining on his face through the window. He sighed and pressed his hands over his eyes to block out the light. There again was the pull, the string pulled taut, the cord that, if he followed it, he knew would lead him to that crumbling building in the valley. He sat up, his hands falling into his lap. He stared at them for a moment, at the callouses on his palms, and remembered an autumn night all those years ago, Luna holding his hand and tracing his future in the lines she found there.

 _Your life will be controlled by fate,_ _pre-ordained from past worlds…and you will love someone, deeply, and they will be with you for the rest of your life…_

He dressed, packed a bag with some snacks and a couple water bottles, and grabbed a piece of toast for his breakfast. He left a quick note on the old kitchen table – _going for a hike, be back late- H_ – and set off without seeing anyone, knowing if he did he would have to explain, and if he explained Ron would want to come with him. But this was something he had to do alone. Something he should have done a long time ago.

It was a few kilometres into town, and another mile or so beyond to the manor. By the time Harry found himself on the old towpath towards the manor, his feet were sore and the sun had climbed high into the clear blue sky. He sat down on a rotting stump to drink his water and eat one of the apples he had brought with him as he wiped the sweat from his brow. His T-shirt stuck to his back, and a bead of sweat trickled down the valley of his spine. His knobbly knees stuck out from his well-worn cargo shorts, the black hair of his legs curling in the heat. His shoes were caked in mud and dust. He put away his water bottle, tossed the apple core into the undergrowth, and shrugged on his rucksack once more. There was no turning back now.

Part of the roof had caved in over the year. Some of the boards over the windows had begun to rot and come away. The ivy had almost devoured the entire front of the building, covering the stone in glossy green leaves and hungry vines. Harry hesitated at the window to the drawing room, his stomach twisting itself into a knot. He bit his lip. Then he tossed his rucksack in before crawling in himself.

The chaise lounge smelled heavily of mildew, and the wall below the window had taken severe water damage. Guilt ran through Harry like a chill as he realised it was because he hadn’t closed the window properly last time. He slung his rucksack over his shoulder again and looked around. The drawing room was empty, dust motes floating in the sunbeams sneaking through the boarded windows.

“Draco?” he called. No answer. He went to the hallway and called again. Nothing. So he made his way up the grand staircase, past the empty rooms and the faded portraits of stern-faced men and women who watched him with pale grey eyes. He walked down the corridor to Draco’s room, where the door stood ajar. He stood outside for a moment, his pulse thrumming, unsure if he should knock or not. He pushed the door open wider. It creaked loudly on rusty hinges, and Harry winced. “Draco?” he called one more time as he stepped into the room. “You here?”

The bedroom was stuffy and warm. Harry wrinkled his nose at the smell of rotting wood and mildewing sheets that hung in the air. He’d forgotten it, forgotten about the wrought iron fireplace cover, the marble mantle, the green velvet curtains. At first, Harry thought the room was empty. But then he heard a voice from behind him, and he spun around.

“Harry.”

Draco sat on the ground, his back against the wall beside the open door. Where the light hit him, he almost disappeared, the summer sun shining right through him. But Harry could still make out his eyes, cold and clear like the dawn. Harry’s breath caught in his throat.

“Draco.” Harry cleared his throat and set his rucksack down next to the bed. “Hi.”

Draco blinked at him for a moment. “Hi?” he echoed in disbelief. “You disappear for a year, and all you’ve got is ‘hi’?” When Harry shrugged, Draco let out a hollow chuckle and leaned his head back against the wall to stare at the peeling ceiling. “How was London?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” Harry replied. He came over and sat down besides Draco with a soft groan, stretching his legs out in front of him and resting his head back against the wall, mirroring Draco. “It was fun for the first couple months. Then classes started getting harder and harder, and I spent more time studying than out in the city.” He paused, rolling his head to the side to look at Draco’s semi-translucent profile. Draco continued to stare at the ceiling. “I met someone,” Harry said.

Draco’s eyes seemed to ice over. He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Right,” he said. “Good for you.”

“We broke up.”

Draco finally looked over at him, his brow furrowed. “Oh? Why?” he asked.

Harry shrugged. “He wasn’t what I wanted, really,” he said quietly. “It’s hard to love someone when you’ve already given your heart away.”

Draco sighed and turned away from Harry, his gaze fixed on the moth-eaten bed skirt. A cloud passed over the sun outside, sending a dark shadow across the room. Draco’s form coalesced, grew more solid beside him, but Harry knew that if he reached out, there would still be no flesh and blood there to touch. So he held his hands in his lap instead.

“Harry,” Draco murmured, running a hand through his fine blonde hair, “we’ve been over this.”

“I’m not a child anymore,” Harry argued. “I’ll be twenty next month.”

“And what about what I told you last year? About who I am, where I’m from?” Draco demanded, twisting around to face Harry properly. “Last year, you had a bloody panic attack and ran away from me. What the fuck has changed since then?”

“Nothing. Everything.” Harry crossed his arms over his chest as he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “Last year… last year, after you told me, my scar started hurting, remember?” Draco nodded with a frown. “Well, when it did, I started… remembering. I saw everything. Everything that happened in your world, to your Harry Potter. And it was too much, I couldn’t handle it, and I’m sorry, I ran. I thought I would never be able to face you again. But in the end, I couldn’t stay away.” He met Draco’s gaze, his green eyes earnest as he searched Draco’s face. Draco shook his head and passed a hand over his face.

“What do you mean, you remembered? How is that possible?” Draco asked, half under his breath, as if asking the universe rather than Harry. Harry bit his lip as he tried to think of a way to prove what he had seen. Then, he straightened up and said,

“You saved him. Downstairs, in the drawing room.” Draco froze, his mouth agape. Harry pressed on. “You could have turned him over to Voldemort, but you didn’t, you pretended you didn’t know him.”

Draco flinched at the name, but even as he did his eyes widened in shock. “I never told you his name,” he whispered. “I can’t even say it myself. But how – ?”

Harry shrugged with the smallest of smiles. “I told you,” he said. “I remembered. And it took me a long time to reconcile the two… the two lives. I would wake up with nightmares, just like I did when I was younger, but instead of the car crash, it was of Voldemort, or Sirius dying, or Hermione getting tortured by your mad aunt. But I also remembered the good parts. Christmas at Hogwarts, Fred and George pulling pranks, playing Quidditch – fuck, having the memory of flying but not being able to do it here, in this world, is so, so…”

“Bittersweet.” Draco’s expression softened, disbelief mingling with awe in the slant of his lips. Harry nodded, his own smile growing.

“Yeah. Bittersweet,” he murmured. “And what’s more, I got to remember growing up with you as him – all the hatred and rivalry and strange obsession. He might have married Ginny – which honestly weirds me out, she’s like a sister to me – but he wasn’t straight, I can tell you that. He had a crush on Cedric, that boy who died, in fourth year, but beyond that, he really did feel… something, towards you, that I don’t think even he could explain.”

Harry looked down at his hand, at the forked heart and life lines on his palm. He traced the shape of them with his fingertip, trying to remember Luna’s words from that night. “Your lives were connected,” he said at last. “Our lives. Maybe that’s why you’re here. There’s no Draco Malfoy here, in this world, besides you. Maybe this is the universe’s way of reconnecting us.” He glanced at Draco through his thick black lashes, his heart pounding at his sternum as he tried to gauge Draco’s reaction. Draco opened his mouth, closed it again. Harry continued tentatively. “People become ghosts when they have unfinished business, right? Well, maybe the unfinished business is something to do with us, with your Harry and me. Maybe something you always wanted to tell him, but never could. Something you always felt but could never do anything about.”

Harry swallowed hard, his mouth uncomfortably dry. Draco looked away, pulling his knees into his chest. Harry knew he should stop talking, should leave this all behind – what good could come from being in love with a ghost? Still, he continued, started to ramble, even. “Maybe I’m wrong, I could be completely wrong, but I don’t think I am. I think the whole reason you’re here wasn’t for you to see my side of the story, but for me to see yours. I had to see how you’ve grown, how you’ve changed since the war, how you feel about….”

“Harry.”

Harry bit back the words threatening to spill out of his mouth. Draco looked at him. Draco tried to control his emotions, but Harry could see it all, had learned to read him better than anything over the past nine years. In the turn of his eyebrow, the shape of his mouth, the tightness of his jaw, he saw the hope, the fear, the sweet adoration as clear as day, and his heart leapt.

“I want that to be true,” Draco whispered finally. “But what if it isn’t? What good could come from this?”

“What good comes from you staying in this house forever, sitting in your own self-pity?” Harry replied before he was aware of what he was saying.

“What good comes from you being in love with a fucking ghost?” Draco retorted with a hint of his old sneer. “For fuck’s sake, Harry, you have a whole life ahead of you! Who knows, the love of your life is probably back in London somewhere, and you haven’t even met them yet! You can’t stay here with me forever!”

“I know that!” Harry shouted back. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I love you, Draco!”

Silence fell between them. The house creaked and groaned around them, old bones settling deeper into the earth. Draco looked close to tears. Harry’s chest rose and fell with each sharp breath. Then Draco got to his feet.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “Not really.”

Harry stood, getting so close to Draco that their noses were inches apart. “Yes, I do,” he said, his voice firm. “I know because I have him in my head as well. I’ve seen you, Draco. I know you. All of you. And for all your mistakes and your flaws, I love you. For all the kindness and gentleness you have shown me over the years, I love you.”

“Stop,” Draco whispered, the tears beginning to spill down his cheeks. But Harry pressed on.

“You made me laugh when no one else could. You taught me that being gay wasn’t a crime or something to be ashamed of. You were there for me, even if it was only four times out of the year. And your Harry could see it. Amidst the bullying and all the times you fought, he cared about you. You were his enemy, sure, but he did care, and he saw you, after the war. He knew you had stopped believing in everything you were taught, he knew you were trying to do better, be better.”

“Please,” Draco choked out, one shaking hand coming up to cover his mouth as he wept. “Please, stop, please.”

“You know why he stayed with Ginny? He loved her, but he was scared. Scared to come out and say he liked men and women. Scared what the world would say when they found out their saviour was queer. He had survived everything else, but he had seen what could happen to those who were different, even in your world. He had so many expectations set on him, so many people looking to him for guidance, and he was so tired, so _tired_.” Harry’s breath hitched in his throat, and he tried to steady himself again. It was as if the other Harry Potter was speaking through him, as if the words coming out of his mouth weren’t his but the other Harry’s, as if he was nothing more than a conduit from one world to another.

“He wanted to reach out to you,” he continued, not knowing what was going to come next, “so many times over the years. But everyone told him it wasn’t a good idea, and he was so busy between becoming an Auror and helping rebuild Hogwarts and trying to keep his relationship together that he convinced himself that he shouldn’t, that you wouldn’t want to talk to him anyway. He married Ginny because he hoped it would save their relationship, because he loved her and didn’t want to lose her because he wasn’t _in love_ with her. But he never stopped thinking about you.” Tears were streaming down his cheeks now, and he tried to wipe them away without dislodging his glasses. “Never. He cared about you, Draco, now and always. So when I say I love you, I mean it, from both of us. I love you.”

Draco lowered his hand from his mouth, his lip trembling. “I love you, too,” he said, his voice thick with tears and years of longing.

Now, dear reader, there are two endings to this story. The first goes like this.

With his words, Draco’s form began to solidify. His feet sunk into the thick layer of dust on the floorboards, his clothes rustled as he moved, his hands began to take shape and substance. No longer could Harry see through him – there was flesh and bone before him, not a ghost but a body, real and shaking as he stood. His lips and cheeks grew pink as he stared down at himself in shock. He patted himself down, his eyes widening. Harry let out a slightly hysterical laugh.

“Oh my gods,” Draco gasped. “Holy Merlin and Morgana.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Harry murmured. “You’re here. You’re real.”

Draco nodded slowly, looking up at Harry with an incredulous smile. “I’m not dead,” he said. Harry shook his head with a silly grin plastered on his face.

“No, no you’re not.” Harry reached for him, and for the first time, his hands didn’t pass through the other man. Draco’s shoulders were warm beneath his hands. So was his neck, his jaw, his scalp as he tangled his fingers in Draco’s silky fine hair. And when Draco wrapped his arms around Harry, they were solid and strong against his waist. They leaned their foreheads together, breathing each other in. Draco smelled like the soap he had used the day he died – citrus and mint. Harry smelled like sweat and dust and pepper, and Draco grinned, because he could smell him, for the first time in years.

“You’re here,” Harry whispered, his breath against Draco’s lips, making him shiver. “You’re really here.”

“Yeah.” Draco pulled him impossible closer, their noses brushing. “I’m here. I’m here.”

When they kissed, sweet and tender at first, the world came to a halt. Then, when the kiss deepened, grew hungry and passionate and desperate, the world spun on, faster and faster around them as they tore at each other’s clothes, as they moaned into each other’s mouths, as they came together again and again, skin against skin. By the time they slowed, naked and covered in sweat and grime as they lay on the old four-poster bed in each other’s arms, the day had begun to wane, but they still had several hours before the darkness came. Until then, until reality returned, they could stay there, Harry’s head on Draco’s chest, listening to a heartbeat at once new and familiar.

“I love you,” Harry murmured again. Draco kissed the top of his head, burying his nose in Harry’s curls.

“I love you, too,” he replied.

In that moment, they were happy.

I wish that were the truth, dear reader. But there is a second ending to this story, and this, I’m sad to say, is what really happened that day.

Draco lowered his hand from his mouth, his lip trembling. “I love you, too,” he said, his voice thick with tears and years of longing.

As he spoke, the edges of his form began to shiver and fade. Draco’s eyes closed, and he let out a long sigh, his arms outstretched. He seemed to fall backwards into the air, his body nothing more than smoke and mist. For a moment, the shape of him hung suspended. But even as Harry reached for him, Draco was gone. His business on this mortal plane was complete. Harry was alone once more.

Harry fell to his knees in the empty room. He called Draco’s name, over and over again, until it became a lament, a prayer, a whisper. There was no one there to hear him. He buried his face in his hands, rocked back on his heels, and wept.

-

Epilogue

Harry moved his last box into his new flat, dropping it onto his unmade bed. The building was relatively new, and the flat still had that new paint smell. Harry had been pleasantly surprised to find it in the middle of Camden, where most of the buildings that claimed to be ‘new’ were from the sixties and still smelled like it. Sure, it was a little more expensive than he would like, but he had a part-time job working at the café near his old dorm, and since his scholarship covered his tuition, all he had to worry about was the living expenses. He looked around the room, nodding to himself. He would have to find a desk, and a chair, maybe a bookcase and a nightstand, but at least there was a mattress and a functioning toilet he only had to share with three other people – two girls from his course, Pansy and Padma, and a bloke named Blaise that Pansy had assured him she was not sleeping with. The kitchen had more than two hobs, and a washing machine that wouldn’t eat all of his coins. He smiled. He felt like a real adult for the first time in his life. A real adult who was starving after moving all of his belongings across London.

As he stepped out of his flat and was about to lock the door behind him, he heard a commotion down the hall. He finished locking up and followed the sound of some incredibly colourful cursing that Harry could have sworn was half in French. It appeared that he wasn’t the only one moving in today. Someone had tripped on their way up the stairs while carrying a box, which had split open and spilled what seemed like several hundred books all over the stairwell. Harry immediately began picking them up, stacking them in his arms, already asking if the man was alright, if he had hurt anything.

“No, just my pride.”

Harry’s head snapped up. He would know that voice anywhere. And there, on the landing, wearing all black and rubbing his shin as he scooped up his scattered books, was a young man with white blond hair and soft grey eyes. Harry’s jaw dropped.

“ _Draco_?”


End file.
